HTC Acquires Abaxia to Strengthen Smartphone Software Development

HTC is acquiring Abaxia, a mobile software company that has collaborated with a number of HTC competitors, including Nokia, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson. As it competes with Apple and others in mobility, HTC says it expects the purchase to help speed its innovation.

Smartphone maker HTC
has acquired Abaxia, a Paris-based mobile software developer. In the past,
Abaxia has worked to create software with HTC
and also with a number of its handset competitors, including Nokia, Motorola,
LG Electronics and Sony Ericsson, as well as wireless carriers such as Orange and France Telecom.

According to a June 7 Wall Street Journal
article, the purchase price was approximately $13.2 million.

"The addition of Abaxia [will] deepen and broaden our software development
capabilities so that we can innovate at an even faster pace," Peter Chou, CEO of
HTC, said in a statement.

"HTC and Abaxia have worked closely together in the past
and our businesses complement each other well," Abaxia CEO
Cedric Mangaud added. "We're excited to be joining such a significant and
emerging mobile brand."

"As an innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in
2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should
be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best,
most accessible mobile experiences possible," Jason Mackenzie, HTC's vice
president for North America, said in a statement at the time. "We are
taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry
partners and, most importantly, our customers that use HTC phones."

Nothing has yet come of either lawsuit. As for HTC, Chou said in the Abaxia
announcement HTC is currently "committed to creating the best possible
mobile experience for our customers today, tomorrow and into the future."

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.